I'M SPIRITUAL, BUT NOT RELIGIOUS
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
September 14, 2008
Acts 2:43-47
A story shared by a pastor: "In the sixth grade this blond kid showed up one day. Our teacher informed us that this new member of our class was from Poland, a 'displaced person,' who had come to live in our town following the second World War. 'Things are bad in Poland,' our teacher told us.
"The kid seemed nice enough, except for his lack of English. But we quickly discovered that he had a problem: he stole food from people's lunch sacks. Almost everyone had seen him do it. An apple here, and a sandwich there. Although he had a lunch of his own, every day, during morning recess, he continued to steal food.
"One day after a young girl tearfully reported two missing cookies, the teacher called the boy up before the class and said, 'Look at me! This is America! There's enough food here for everyone. If you ever need food, all you have to do is ask me. The war is over and this isn't Poland!' In that moment, you could see his eyes lighten as if someone was finally making sense. It was the last time he stole anything. He had awakened to the facts. He had been moved to a different location, exchanged citizenship, no longer displaced...finally he was home." You might say that finally he heard the summons - had seen the opportunity - to live a different story, to walk in a new world.
A United Methodist colleague writes: "We were all going around the room telling why we enjoyed being Methodists, why we so loved our Methodist church. Some liked the fellowship, others liked the friends, some liked the music. Then one young woman said, "To be honest, part of me hates the united Methodist Church. Before I became a part of this church, my life was my life. I was fairly content with myself. Then the church took me to Haiti and made me stand near people who were dying because of their dire poverty and yet who were also undeniably richer in their faith than I will ever be. I could have had a fairly happy life without the church. Now, those strangers in Haiti have become my obsession. I'm thinking about them as if they were my family and I've got the church to blame for that." She gets involved with a church, seems like a nice idea, and before she knows it, she finds herself involved with a family far larger than she had ever imagined, she finds herself summoned to switch stories, to enter a new world, and get involved in the adventure of loving Jesus more dearly and following him more nearly.
"All who believed were together and all had things in common, they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home, ate their bread with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people." I think those members of that first Christian community in Jerusalem would understand the hope and the challenge of being called to live a new story, indeed a new life. At Pentecost they had received nothing less than the Spirit of the Lord himself, and for them nothing could ever be the same again. They found themselves strangely dissatisfied with present arrangements, with doing things the way they had always been done. They had seen a new way, had heard a call to a new life, and could never go back. And it was their participation in the church, yes, the church, that was a pathway, an opening, to this new life.
Warning: here is an old joke...how many church members does it take to change a light bulb? Actually seven. One to change the bulb and six to stand around and say how much they miss the old one. Too often, I fear, that's people's experience of the church -- rigid, stuck in the past, resistant to change, interested only in self-preservation. The way we've always done it. But must it be that way?
There is a popular phrase here in the West County. And because of what I do for a living, maybe I hear it more than most. But to me it has become a Sonoma County mantra. The phrase, "I'm spiritual, but not religious." I'm sure many of you have heard it, I suspect many of you have said it. Since I often hear this phrase after I have been identified as the pastor of a church, what it means to me is "Yes, I am pursuing a spiritual path. Yes, I believe in a higher power, the divine, the holy, the sacred, something or someone greater than this, but I don't need the church for my quest. In fact, the church, with its rules, restrictions, narrowness and structure only gets in my way. And so I'm spiritual, but not religious. I have no need of a church." And - confession time - there are those moments, after a particularly challenging meeting, another sixteen hour day, struggles with church dramas that leave my energy drained and my passion chilled, there are those moments when I can agree. But must it be that way? Must the church be in the way of, be a barrier to, spiritual growth or can it, in fact, be a place where we are invited to see a new way, to live a different story.
I think of that Methodist woman and her discovery of all those new family members she had in Haiti...because of the church. To her the world is now a different place. I think of the folks from our church who have gone to New Orleans the last two summers. For them, the news from the gulf coast can never be the same. They've made connections. The world, for them, is a different place. Those folks are family. I think of one of our church members, Jim Dempsey. He was on our mission trip to Nicaragua three years ago. Jim had been there before. We went out to a place in the country, hardly a town, where he had helped build a school. The school was now completed. There were teachers and children attending classes. Like a proud father Jim showed us around, told us the story of how they had begun to build that school. Those kids are now his kids, part of his family. He has a stake in their future, as indeed do all of us who shared in that trip. Their story is now part of our story, and we can't help but see the world with new eyes. I once heard it said that we in the church learn a story we could never have made up on our own. And what a story it is. What new worlds it can open. We have a wonderful and challenging story to tell, a story to live and to share with a world that could use some new stories right now.
Consider for a moment the Lord's prayer. "Forgive us our debts..." This was a common prayer in Jesus' day, a prayer spoken in a poor peasant society where almost everyone was in debt, everyone in danger of foreclosure. Just about everyone you knew in your village was praying, "God, get me out of debt!" Nothing new here. But then Jesus adds, "As we forgive our debtors. God may we forgive the debts of those who owe us." Right here, a bomb explodes in the middle of the prayer. You no longer pray just that you can be released from debt, but that you can have the grace to release each other from debt. That bomb, that explosion, that's now part of our story!
Jesus goes into the home of Zacchaeus, the outcast, the sinner, the despised tax collector, and reminds him that he too, is a beloved child of God, and Zacchaeus' life is completely turned around. But all the people in the village can do is grumble because Jesus' has broken bread with this sinner. Thinking about this story, William Willimon tells us, if you are going to follow Jesus, then you had best be prepared to get hammered by the world for eating and associating with the wrong kind of people. That's part of what it means to be a faithful church. That part of what it means to be a faithful church. That too is a part of our story!
A father welcomes home a wayward son in a dramatic and costly act of forgiveness and grace. The boy who deserves and expects the back of his father's hand, receives an embrace, as astonished neighbors and an angry older brother look on. Reconciliation, forgiveness, grace - when the world around us is screaming for blood, that too is part of our story. Do we have the guts, the wisdom, the faith, to live and share such a story? Do we have the guts, the wisdom, the faith to be a church that is not a roadblock on the path of spiritual growth and discovery, but is in fact a doorway.
Oh, what a story we have. And I wonder on Sundays, when you come here, do you feel it...this sense, this assurance, that a new world's a'comin', indeed that it's already here? This is what I hope we can launch here today and all our Sundays down the road. For if we can't, if indeed we are in the way of this wondrous story of Jesus and his love, then all the West County folks are right to ask us just what are we doing here?
Ah, but if we dare to tell and live this story, if we believe ever more deeply in God and each other, if the Kingdom - the reign - of God takes bodily form right here, if we, like that first church, show the world what forgiveness and reconciliation and acceptance and compassion look like through our life together...well, then there is going to be no doubt what we are doing here. So this is what we say to each other, to Sebastopol and the world. Come join us. See what God is up to here, be part of a new story, a new world a'comin', dare to be both spiritual and religious as we journey and grow together. Now that's a story worth telling, that's something worth launching!